I think you may be confusing cool with popular. Cordelia, Harm and Buffy were popular--not cool.
Cool would be Giles, as you said (understated cool), Spike, Faith, Gunn, Illyria and...that's it. Angel dresses cool, true, but that's more a mysterious vibe. Riley dressed like a secret agent, er, cause he was one, but secret agents don't have to dress a certain way to be cool--they just are, and he wasn't. At all. Wesley tried to dress bad ass, which is cool, but he was still a dork (much like Andrew and that Spike-ish duster). When he wasn't trying--when he fell into a grumpy pants hole of depression of being abandoned by all his friends--that's when he became authentically cool.
Dawn tries to be more adult, but I'm not sure she actually tried to be cool. Either way, she's still a spaz--just older.
And while Spike may have a facade at times, the personality of Spike is genuine, and authentically cool.
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Cool would be Giles, as you said (understated cool), Spike, Faith, Gunn, Illyria and...that's it. Angel dresses cool, true, but that's more a mysterious vibe. Riley dressed like a secret agent, er, cause he was one, but secret agents don't have to dress a certain way to be cool--they just are, and he wasn't. At all. Wesley tried to dress bad ass, which is cool, but he was still a dork (much like Andrew and that Spike-ish duster). When he wasn't trying--when he fell into a grumpy pants hole of depression of being abandoned by all his friends--that's when he became authentically cool.
Dawn tries to be more adult, but I'm not sure she actually tried to be cool. Either way, she's still a spaz--just older.
And while Spike may have a facade at times, the personality of Spike is genuine, and authentically cool.